The Internet and that portion of the Internet comprising the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) has proven to be a useful and effective way for people to access vast amounts of information quickly and conveniently. Accordingly, Internet content and the number of services provided thereon have increased dramatically and is projected to continue to do so for many years. As the Internet becomes increasingly prevalent throughout the world, more and more people are coming to rely on the medium as a necessary part of their daily lives. Presently, the majority of people typically access the Web with a personal computer (PC) using a browser such as Netscape Navigator™ or Microsoft Internet Explorer™, for example. Consequently, the vast majority of Web sites are written in hypertext markup language (HTML) which are designed to be viewed on the full size displays of desktop PCs.
Given that the Web is becoming increasingly indispensable to many people, there is a growing need to be able to access online resources at anytime and from anywhere. A new generation of handheld devices have appeared on the market (or are currently in development) to fulfill this demand. The fast pace of technological development have led to dramatic increases in processing power, memory capacity and the like that make handheld devices particularly suitable for use in accessing the Web while on the move. The term handheld devices is used herein to refer to any portable device such as handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and communicator devices such as the Nokia 9110 Communicator and its successors, in addition to mobile phones. Although wireless Web access holds high promise in terms of productivity and convenience, there are notable factors that make Web browsing with handheld devices difficult. For example, these devices typically have small displays, limited processing power and memory, limited input facilities as compared to desktop PCs.
The small displays of handheld devices are designed to facilitate portability which lend to a small footprint that can be easily carried in a shirt pocket, for example. The relatively small displays of handheld devices poses a particular problem when viewing Web pages that are commonly designed for viewing on full size desktop computer displays. By way of example, many Web pages are designed to be viewed at a resolution of at least SVGA i.e. 800×600 pixels or above (horizontal by vertical resolution), which when displayed on a handheld computing device with a resolution of e.g. 160×160 pixels (typical for PDA devices) results in viewing only a small portion of the page. The problem is particularly acute in mobile phones because of their disproportionately small displays that are typically only capable of displaying 2–6 lines of text with limited graphics capabilities. Thus, attempting to view and navigate a Web page on a handheld device can be onerously difficult.
There have been a number of methods proposed for viewing and navigating Web-based data on handheld devices. One method is to design the Web page to work on all display sizes independent of the particular device. This could be done by displaying only essential data from the page and possibly using some sort of predictive navigation technique where the browsing history is used to display links that the user would likely follow. In practice this technique of filtering content does not work effectively for many users since some data deemed important by a user may have been eliminated. Additionally, the method is limited in the types of pages that can be displayed because Web pages comprising a large proportion of graphics are not easily reduced by these filtering techniques. Another method is design several versions of Web pages for display on various devices. This is achieved by detecting the particular device used, e.g. when a sync operation is made with the HTTP server, the appropriate page best suited for display on the device is then downloaded. A disadvantage of this is that several versions of the page must be created to conform to the many types of devices that may access it which must be continually updated for new devices.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a method which would enable original Web pages to be displayed on handheld devices.